


send us to perfect places

by queenoftherodeo



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Coming of Age, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Internalized Homophobia, Miscommunication, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, cheerleader crystal, crystal has her red m visage hair and this is v important to me, headgear gigi. my baby, minor jackie/jan and trixie/katya, strangers to friends to lovers. kind of. it's complicated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenoftherodeo/pseuds/queenoftherodeo
Summary: If the other girl is put off by her rambling, she doesn't show it. She tucks a stray strand of coppery hair behind her ear, and Gigi's eyes cling to the movement. "It's good to meet you, Just Gigi." She grins, showing off a set of bleached-white teeth and extra sharp canines. Gigi cannot stop looking at her. "And I'm sorry for making you cry." Then Crystal laughs, not unkindly, and the lump in Gigi's throat shrinks down to the size of a cherry pit while her heart threatens to leap right out of her chest.Or: Perpetual loser Gigi Goode relocates from Illinois to California and subsequently crashes headfirst into Quartz Hill's head cheerleader, the endearing and enigmatic Crystal Methyd. It's all uphill — and then downhill — from there.
Relationships: Gigi Goode/Crystal Methyd
Comments: 27
Kudos: 46





	1. gigi goode vs los angeles

**Author's Note:**

> quartz hill is a real high school in los angeles but i did the absolute bare minimum reading...please assume nothing i write in relation to it is even remotely accurate, ty

So, here's the thing:

Maybe without the headgear, Gigi thinks, people would be able to look past her social ineptitude, her rambling on (and on, and on...), her lack of grace. Maybe even reversed — if she were witty and charming and quick on her feet, it’s totally possible that the headgear wouldn't be such an issue.

Unfortunately for her, Gigi Goode has yet to grow out of both. She's funnier in her head than she ever is out loud. When Gigi was only five years-old, her ballet instructor deemed her a lost cause. The headgear is just the shitty icing on the already pretty shitty cake.

In ten years or so she'll be a rich, famous, world-renowned designer with a perfect set of social skills and an even more perfectly-set jaw, and none of this will have mattered at all. Someone will drop a _This you?_ in her Twitter replies attached to a picture of her with a frizzy lion's mane of blonde hair, grimacing around her headgear's facebow, and Gigi will have a good laugh about it. Then she'll indulge herself in another glass of Chardonnay.

For the time being, as a high school senior, it feels a little like a death sentence.

It's this dread that looms over Gigi the entire three-day drive from Woodstock to Los Angeles. It tickles the back of her skull while she stares out the window as they drive through Des Moines, and it settles like a napping cat around her shoulders that night in their hotel room in Omaha. It whispers persistently to her when they pass through Las Vegas, and Gigi cranes her neck, nose shoved as close to the window as she can get, looking for the telltale shapes of different hotels she's only ever seen in photographs, pyramids and the Statue of Liberty and a castle with towering spires.

It haunts her as she lays awake the first few nights in her new home, — a two-bedroom townhouse whose rent is more than double what they would've paid for a whole house back in Illinois — sweat beading across her forehead. One of their new next-door neighbors, whom Gigi has yet to actually meet, has a beautiful singing voice. She only knows this because the neighbor in question croons well into the early hours of the morning, _every_ night, without fail. Gigi's not confrontational, though, and neither is her mother, so all she can do is pull the covers over her head and weather it.

This move means a lot to her mom, so Gigi's trying really, really hard not to be an insufferable cunt.

So on the first day of senior year and her first official day at Quartz Hill, when Christine Goode is kind enough to drive Gigi to school instead of forcing her to face the kids on the bus, Gigi makes an effort to act like nothing is wrong. Nope, just a weirdo headgear lesbian from _Illi-fucking-nois_ dropped right into LA's lap who will definitely not draw any kind of negative attention at all. Nope, no problems here! Maybe if she's real lucky, there'll be another kid with a fucked up jaw and the headgear will be nothing new to any of her peers.

She's sure the terror is painted all over her face regardless. She's jittery with nerves when her mom kisses her cheek goodbye and squeezes her hand for luck.

"And Gigi!" she calls after her. "Thank you, again." The _for me_ goes unspoken. When she says shit like this, with such earnest gratitude, Gigi almost forgets that she's being thrown to the wolves. Technically she's kind of letting herself be thrown; still, that doesn't mean she has to like it. She gives her mom a thumbs up anyway.

Her first few classes pass by in an uncomfortable, repetitious blur — she's introduced at the beginning of each as _Genevieve Goode_ , which is like, one of the worst things Gigi can think of, second only to opening her mouth and saying _You can just call me Gigi, actually._ The key, she's realized, is to call as little attention to herself as possible. She'd made a deliberate effort this morning to dress nice enough to avoid public humiliation (her mom says LA's only cruel like that in the movies; Gigi isn't so sure) but plain enough that nobody would think to give her a second glance.

Besides, no one's going to give a shit if she's wearing Gucci loafers or a Cartier bracelet (neither of which she owns anyway — but still) when their eyes are glued to the metal framing the bottom half of her face. Over the summer she'd added glitter to the head strap to spice things up, but Gigi's starting to regret it.

Mostly, Gigi just wants to hide. Sure, she's appreciative of the muttered _hi's_ she gets from a few brave souls near the back of the classroom, but Gigi isn't new to this sort of thing. She knows they don't mean anything, not really. Nobody's going to track her down after class and ask her to sit with them at lunch or invite her to a party or anything like that. When the time comes to partner up for class projects, she’s not going to be anyone’s first choice, and that’s fine. It's totally fine.

Taking her headgear off and putting it back on at lunchtime is always an ordeal, and there's no shortage to the list of things Gigi would rather do than let anyone here watch her fumble around with it. It makes her uncomfortable, it makes them uncomfortable. Lose-lose. It's because of this, among several other things, that Gigi's no stranger to eating alone in a bathroom stall. She did it often back in Woodstock, knees bouncing while she munched quietly, walled in by graffiti hearts and phone numbers. Sometimes she'd forgo lunch entirely and sit in a corner of the library to work on sketches, dreaming of a future where everything was better.

Even so, Gigi figures a new school is the perfect chance to create the illusion that her self-esteem isn't entirely in the gutter. The unoccupied corner of a table with only empty fruit cups and half-eaten dinner rolls for company is an upgrade she's more than willing to accept.

Unfortunately, by the time her tray is piled with a borderline inedible-looking burger, soggy fries, and an extra fudge brownie (the lunch lady had given it to her along with a pitying look that suggested the worst was yet to come, which...awesome) there isn't a single empty seat to squeeze into in the cafeteria that, looking at it now, seems far too small and outdated for the enormous, swarming population of students.

Gigi makes a beeline for the courtyard door, only to find the tables and benches outside crammed with more students. Some of them are sitting cross-legged against the wall in the shade. And they all seem completely at ease wherever they are; they're laughing, eating, shouting, scribbling away in notebooks, flicking food playfully at each other from across the table. Every few seconds someone's gaze will drift to her, linger for just long enough for Gigi to feel the familiar sting of judgement, then flicker away. Some are more subtle than others.

One boy yells to another a few tables away, and in turn the other flips him off. His own table dissolves into laughter. A group of girls are all smushed together thigh-to-thigh on a high planter's ledge, feet dangling a couple inches above the ground. They're listening to music, something loud and upbeat that Gigi might recognize if it weren't for sudden rush of blood in her ears.

She absolutely cannot be having a panic attack in front of her peers on the first fucking day of school. She isn't.

Gigi's throat closes. Maybe she is.

It's not that she's never felt this alone, this _othered_ in her life. But the kids back home were used to her weirdness, and Gigi knew all the best corners to squeeze into so as not to be bothered; she knew the people she needed to avoid and the ones that were harmless. Here, she's back at square one, and it _hurts_.

Her free hand flies instinctively to her back pocket, scrabbling for her phone. She needs to call her mom, or text her or _something_. She needs to beg her to come get her and never, ever take her back because she's not cut out for this, and all the while she's still blocking the courtyard door, knees threatening to buckle beneath her.

Before she can move out of the way like someone with more than two brain cells might think to do, something crashes into her back. Gigi stumbles forward, barely maintaining her grip on her tray. The offender, a scowling girl with a tattoo peeking out from her shirtsleeve and sleek brown hair down to her shoulders, doesn't apologize. She barely spares Gigi a passing glance, brows raised as if to say, _Seriously?_ Then someone is calling her name from a table across the yard ( _"Dahlia!")_ , and she's gone. Gigi can't even blame her. After all, _she'd_ been the one in the way, goggling at her new peers as though they may cannibalize her.

She's still a touch worried they might.

What little appetite she had is gone. Gigi ditches her styrofoam tray on top of an overflowing trash can, but comes back for her chocolate milk.

The back doors of the school lead out to the sports fields, browning in the summer heat. Breeze kicks up the dust from the track, and Gigi clears her throat. There's no shade here like there had been in the courtyard, and Gigi has to shield her eyes from the sun. Despite this, it seems like she's finally, mercifully found somewhere _quiet_.

A couple of boys are sprawled out on the far end of the football field with their heads pillowed on their backpacks. There's a line of dumpsters at the edge of the parking lot to her right, and the stink of cigarette smoke carried over by the breeze that makes Gigi wrinkle her nose. That's nothing new, though. Back in Woodstock two of the girls in her economics class got suspended for smoking in the handicapped bathroom stall during passing period, and plenty more of them would hide cigarettes in their cupped, begloved hands in the wintertime.

When fall sports are in full swing, it'll probably be as packed back here as anywhere. For now, Gigi is grateful for the reprieve.

Pressing her back against the sun-warmed brick, she lets her eyes fall shut for a moment, dropping to the ground and drawing her knees to her chest. Blood is still rushing in her ears as she opens her milk carton, grateful to have saved it, then fishes a straw from the front pocket of backpack. Gigi always keeps a ziplock full of plastic straws on her, which she knows is both incredibly weird _and_ an environmentalist's worst nightmare. But _most_ people can pop open a bottle of water and drink it willy-nilly whenever they feel like. Gigi can't. This truth helps ease her conscience whenever she thinks about how that little Swedish girl would probably be so disappointed with her.

Her stomach growls. She's really starting to regret not saving at least one of the brownies. She knocks her knobby knees together and takes another swig of milk. Aside from the lingering secondhand smoke, the air smells overwhelmingly like the ocean — salt, mostly, which isn't _awful_ but definitely isn't what Gigi's ocean water body wash led her to believe.

From her bag, her sketchbook is calling her name. It's tucked neatly between the heavy books Gigi's been hauling around all morning because she's too paranoid about being late to class to swing by her locker, but before she can think to reach for it, a flash of movement catches in her peripheral.

The smokers shift into focus, lingering in the gap between dumpsters now, and Gigi can't help but look.

Somehow, _cheerleaders_ are not she was expecting to see. She's not sure why. But there are three of them: bleached blonde, sleek black, and a redhead. Their bodies are clad in blue and white and gold, and they're bare shouldered with eyebrow-raisingly short skirts over brightly-colored shapewear. That alone is enough to make Gigi duck her head, cheeks burning with instinctual embarrassment, but it's only a moment before her curiosity gets the best of her. She looks again.

The sunlight catches the glitter on their eyelids and cheekbones. Apart from the colors on their uniforms, they don't look much different from the cheerleaders back in Woodstock (she mentally smacks herself for that one: _shocking discovery by Gigi Goode...people look like people!_ ), except that the girl with the red-orange hair is made up more than anyone Gigi's ever seen — at least, like, in real life. There's something severe to the way her face is painted, all sharp lines and impossibly high, arching brows. She'd probably turn heads even in the movies.

Each of them has a cigarette pinched between their fingers and they're laughing together, falling into each other in a way that makes Gigi's bones ache with loneliness. She wraps her arms around her knees and fights back the sudden, inexplicable urge to cry. She's been trying hard not to in front of her mom since the move, so most of her nights are spent soaking her pillow with tears.

She squeezes her eyes shut and sucks in a breath, wincing when the back of her head hits the wall. God, what the fuck? This isn't her life. She doesn't want this to be her life; seventeen and stupid and enough of a loser to be hiding by the dumpsters on her very first day of school. _Gigi Annalise Goode, you are not going to cry. You have absolutely no reason to be crying right now. You probably have more reasons_ not _to cry right here and right now than you do_ to _cry._

Her worst fears are realized when, from their spot by the dumpsters, one of the cheerleaders shouts, "Hey, new girl! You okay over there?"

Gigi doesn't even look up this time. She bolts upright, and her back scrapes against the brick as she does so. Ignoring the angry sting of it, she high tails it back in the direction of the doors, abandoning her half-empty milk carton. The bathroom is looking really good right now. So is death, hell, purgatory, whatever.

She's moving faster than she thinks she's ever moved in her life (which is saying a lot, because Gigi's not coordinated in the least but she's deadly fast) when she hears someone jog up behind her. _Oh, fuck. Oh, god. If you're out there, please, please strike me down now._ The last time Gigi was actively pursued by bullies after walking away was eighth grade: she didn't think high schoolers still did this kind of thing.

A hand lands on her shoulder.

God _damn_ it.

Gigi whips around. "Look, I'm really just trying to mind my own business."

The girl relinquishes her grip on Gigi's arm, taking a startled step back. Her frown slips away like a flitting shadow warded off by the sun.

"Woah! You're, like, super tall." It's the redhead, who is not _short_ , per se, but definitely falls several inches shy of Gigi's devastating growth spurt. Up close, Gigi can see that her hair is less Ariel and more the color of shiny new pennies; it's clipped back with colorful barrettes and bows and tucked behind her ears. "No, but seriously, are you alright? We were worried you were having a sunstroke or something. Been there! Not fun." She fans herself with her free hand, cigarette still pinched between the fingers of the other.

Gigi is taken aback. There's something disarming about the look in her eyes and the soft curl of her mouth, amused but not cruel. At least not on the surface. Gigi knows better, though: she's been burned by friendlier faces before.

She swallows thickly. "I'm fine. I'm great."

"Well, you don't look fine." The cheerleader crosses her arms, dropping the smoking butt of her cigarette and crushing it under her white sneaker.

This time it's Gigi's turn to frown as she watches it fall and then disappear, grey ash smeared against the asphalt.

"What do I look like, then?" The lump in her throat is the size of a naval orange; it feels, embarrassingly, like some kind of awful, jutting tumor that the other girl should be able to see, or like the chestburster from _Alien_ is about to claw its way through her windpipe instead. She could just walk away. She _should_ just walk away. She doesn't know why she's sticking around just to humor what is clearly for someone else's amusement. Maybe this is her problem. She's always letting herself end up as the mouse.

"Like shit." Gigi's stomach drops, and the girl coughs out a laugh. "God, that was rude. I swear I didn't mean it like that. I just meant, like, you kinda look like you're about to shit yourself?" The girl scrunches up her face thoughtfully, then nods. "Yeah, that."

Gigi feels her own face twist into something inscrutable, even to herself (admittedly not hard; half the time her smiles look like grimaces and she doesn't realize until the dreaded front-facing camera reveals the truth.)

"I just need to get back inside so I'm not late." She clears her throat, gaze rolling up to the sky. Just like that she's about to cry again, hot tears springing to her eyes. This time she doesn't even know _why_ , and that just makes the whole thing more humiliating because this girl isn't even being that rude. Gigi doesn't remember being this sensitive, not since she was a child. Must be something in the water.

The girl's face softens. "Shit, I'm sorry. Please don't cry! You don't need to cry. Seriously, I'll shut up now." She chews the inside of her cheek, then adds, "I'm Crystal." In a move Gigi is not at all expecting, the girl — Crystal — thrusts out her hand for her to shake, as if they're business partners meeting in a harshly-lit Hilton conference room.

Gigi blinks down at the hand offered to her, in turn blinking away the rest of her tears, the lump in her throat momentarily forgotten. She looks down at Crystal's waiting hand, then up to her face, then back down again. Crystal's hand is tan and her fingers are long and her nails are cut short and painted royal blue, though the polish is starting to chip away.

Crystal clears her throat. "This is the part where you're supposed to shake it," she says. The corners of her mouth twitch. "Swear I don't bite." Then she winks, and the motion shakes loose a few stray specks of gold glitter; they float down onto the sun-kissed skin of her cheek.

All at once Gigi's mouth feels like cotton. She takes Crystal's hand, if for nothing else than to keep herself upright, gripping it firmly. Her skin is very warm, but not uncomfortably so like the dry California air weighing down on them, and Gigi silently mourns the loss of it when their hands drop back to their sides.

She struggles to find her voice. "Gigi Goode." And because she never knows when to shut up, she adds, "Like, my mom always introduces me to strangers as Genevieve, and teachers have been calling me that all day, but it's kind of a mouthful, right? I've never really — I mean, I guess it's not important. You can just call me Gigi. If you want to." She can feel a blush creeping up her neck. Crystal's nearly a head shorter than her, but standing in front of her now Gigi feels ant-sized, pathetic and easy to crush like the flattened cigarette under Crystal's shoe.

But if the other girl is put off by her rambling, she doesn't show it. She tucks a stray strand of coppery hair behind her ear, and Gigi's eyes cling to the movement. "It's good to meet you, Just Gigi." She grins, showing off a set of bleached-white teeth and extra sharp canines. Gigi cannot stop looking at her. "And I'm sorry for making you cry." Then Crystal laughs, not unkindly, and the lump in Gigi's throat shrinks down to the size of a cherry pit while her heart threatens to leap right out of her chest.

" _You_ didn't — I mean, it's not...it wasn't your fault. I was just being lame. I'm really, really good at that." Gigi laughs nervously, shifting from foot to foot. "Everything's just a lot right now, I guess, and I freaked out which was _totally_ stupid of me, an-"

As if summoned from god above to save Gigi from herself, the bell rings. It's so loud from where they're standing that they both instinctively jump and cringe away from the noise, then laugh.

Once the sound dies, Crystal asks, "So where are you headed next, then?"

"Um," is the only thing that comes out of Gigi's mouth. She drops her backpack to the ground unceremoniously, like an idiot, palms clammy as she rifles around for the crumpled paper schedule she had perfectly memorized up until this exact moment. "Oh, it's just my elective."

"Which is?"

Gigi does not want to say. She isn't sure why, only that saying it out loud feels like giving Crystal permission to laugh right in her face.

"Fashion and Interior Design," she finally mumbles, voice low as possible. She stuffs the schedule back into her bag and swings the strap over her shoulder. "I'd better go."

"Wait, seriously? That is so sick!" Crystal's grin is huge and real and Gigi might just throw up from relief.

And it's not that she's ever needed any stranger's validation to believe she can and _will_ succeed in the fashion industry someday. It's nice, though, to know that at least one of them doesn't think it's totally ridiculous. Usually people think she's joking when she tells them, which Gigi thinks is kind of fucked up, because if they could get past her quirks they'd realize she's almost always well put-together. Plus, they haven't even seen her sketches.

"I guess so." Gigi shrugs. She hopes Crystal doesn't notice the way her face is twitching — she's making a very concentrated effort not to smile.

"Here, c'mon. I've got Stats next," Crystal pauses to groan, lower lip jutting out in a pout. "Anyway, your class is right down the hall from mine. B32, right?" When Gigi nods, she claps her hands together. "C'mon, I'll show you."

Gigi doesn't know what she means or wants to say. _Oh, no, that's super kind but you really, really don't have to._ Or maybe _What the fuck is this really about?_ But before she can make that decision, Crystal is tugging at her hand and — in yet another move that almost sends Gigi into a state of shock — linking their arms together. As if they're friends. As if they grew up side by side, swapping secrets and clothes and stories. As if they know anything about each other at all.

Gigi's never really had a friend like that, at least not for long, but she's pretty sure that's what they're supposed to do.

"Crystal, what the hell?" shouts one of her fellow cheerleaders that she left in the dust — the blonde. Her hip is cocked, and she looks irritated but somehow not surprised.

"We've gotta get to class!" Crystal calls back, laughing and dragging Gigi towards the doors. "See you hookers later!" She blows them a loud, smacking kiss that makes Gigi duck her head and laugh, too.

It almost feels like being a celebrity, arm-in-arm with Crystal, who draws eyes to her like a magnet even when she seems virtually unaware of it. But that means eyes are on Gigi now, too. The thing about the headgear is that it makes people uncomfortable more than anything else — most of the time, they're too embarrassed to look. (Other times they can't _stop_ looking, but Gigi would rather be completely invisible to them than be a spectacle.)

Even when she was younger, before the headgear but still very much a loser, she never had a friend close enough to call to her across a crowded hallway, let alone tote her around proudly like they've known each other forever.

A strange feeling, definitely, but not an entirely unwelcome one, and Gigi finds herself starting to revel in it while she trots behind Crystal up a back flight of stairs. The other's girls legs are long and lean and evenly tanned, probably from a summer spent at cheer camp doing things Gigi couldn't and wouldn't even dream of. Her calf muscles are defined, and they flex with every step she takes, bounding upwards easily while Gigi — who spent _her_ summer eating frozen Pop-Tarts and going on Wikipedia deep-dives until the sun came up — clambers after her with far less vigor.

She doesn't expect Crystal to grab her arm again at the top of the stairs, but she does, easily, and Gigi's suddenly all too aware of all the places their skin is brushing. The crook of their elbows, fingers against palms. It feels like her heart might actually crawl out of her throat and race away from her. All the while, Crystal seems unfazed, like she does this with every new kid she meets. Maybe she does. She walks with a tiny skip in her step. When people call and wave to her, she waves back. She chats happily to Gigi, pointing out people and things as they pass by, but Gigi hardly hears a word of it. At some point she asks where she moved here from, and Gigi answers back with a numb tongue.

By the time they stop in front of the door marked B32, her head is spinning for brand new reasons. She hopes the AC is turned up high in the classroom; suddenly she's too hot all over even in short sleeves.

"Well," Crystal says, finally untangling their arms. Gigi is almost relieved; she lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "Here you are. Mrs. Velasquez is _super_ cool, don't worry. She'll let you listen to music in class and everything. Or that's what Naomi told me, anyway." She hesitates a moment, like she wishes she could come inside, too, then huffs out a sigh. "Well, hell is calling my name." She rolls her eyes and nods briefly down the hall to her Calc class before squeezing Gigi's forearm. "See ya."

"Yeah." Gigi nods, still a little dazed. It feels like she might be in a dream, the soft kind you're always on the brink of waking up from. Maybe she really did get heat stroke. Maybe she never even woke up this morning at all. Maybe she should get inside instead of having an existential crisis in broad daylight in the middle of the hallway. "You, too."

By the time she remembers, stupidly, to thank her, Crystal is already gone, lost to Gigi's eye among the throng of students still pushing through the halls. Gigi wonders idly if she'd ever been there at all.

When she looks down at her arm and notices the faint trace of glitter body spray that is decidedly not her own, she bites down on the inside of her cheek hard enough to bruise.


	2. the underrated art of spying and half-truths

So, here's the thing:

Gigi might be a weirdo, but she isn't a fucking creep.

She realizes that if you have to preface anything with "I'm not a creep, but..." it probably means you're a creep, but. She really isn't. Gigi _knows_ she's not supposed to be here, nor was it her intention to be until the opportunity presented itself and her curiosity — as usual — got the best of her.

Sure, that explanation is probably not going to fly if she gets caught, but that's a big _if_. Regardless, she'll cross that bridge when she gets to it. She always does.

Gigi flattens herself further against the wall and leans forward microscopically, earning herself another centimeter or so of the view beyond the gymnasium doors' rectangular windows. Her knees are starting to ache dully.

It had started innocuously enough. She'd stayed late for extra help in Calc, per her teacher's invitation. (Crystal had been right to complain about the class: Gigi likes math, but it's fucking _hard_ , and only two weeks in she's already hopelessly lost.) There had been six others to show up; a particular standout was the blonde cheerleader she'd seen with Crystal on that first day behind the school, wisps of smoke curling from the lit end of her cigarette. With huge hair and huge tits, she reminded Gigi of Dolly Parton on acid. The girl split halfway through the session, and Gigi never caught her name.

Then there was the boy who flicked a tiny ball of paper into her hair and fell asleep five minutes in, snoring lightly two desks to Gigi's left, and a girl with multicolored hair who looked like a scene kid's wet dream circa 2008: everything Gigi had wanted desperately to be when she was younger, but her mother refused to let her six (almost seven!) year-old dye her hair or wear makeup and so the dream was dead on arrival.

Despite the general awkwardness of asking questions while trying not to sound like a complete idiot, she'd left the classroom an hour later feeling considerably better about the material and only slightly humiliated. Gigi's going to count that as a win. By then, the school had mostly cleared out for the day. Save for the odd kid still shuffling around papers in his locker and the janitors starting to make their way through the halls to erase the traces of the day, Gigi walked through the hallways alone in near-silence. The familiar noise of rattling trash bin wheels against linoleum had put her at ease, somewhat — the idea that some things are the same no matter where she winds up.

The buses were long gone, and her intention had been to walk home. Around lunchtime, the sky had started to rumble and darken and it felt like the entire city was holding its breath in anticipation, but hours later and still no rain had come. It almost makes Gigi miss Illinois. At least she'll come home dry.

See, Gigi's aim _hadn't_ been to catch a glimpse of movement as she hurried past the gymnasium doors towards the exit, but the cacophonous mixture of blaring music and shouting from the other side was impossible to ignore. Her aim _also_ hadn't been to pick out a familiar voice, extracting it from the rest of the noise like a well-trained police dog.

So instead of heading home like she fucking should have, Gigi's now here, crouched uncomfortably like a stupid bird outside the thrumming gymnasium currently occupied by Quartz Hill's varsity cheer team. Every so often she'll gather up the courage to peer through the window for half a second, hoping to get a glimpse of Crystal, who Gigi hasn't spoken to since that first day.

This is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that Gigi has been actively avoiding her — the vaguest flash of red hair spotted in the hallway is enough to send her reeling in the opposite direction. (As if Crystal is the only ginger in the world. God. It's ridiculous and Gigi knows it.) She doesn't know what she's so afraid of, or even what she's running from. Crystal had been perfectly nice to her, maybe even _too_ nice. Probably the nicest anyone has been to her in years, and Gigi would be very, very stupid not to jump at the opportunity to get to know her better.

It's never that simple, though.

Gigi has liked girls for as long as she can remember. She knows, her mom knows. It's not that big of a deal. It's not even that she cares if anyone else knows — she's not, like, trying to hide it or anything. There are definitely way worse things to be than a lesbian, Gigi figures. It's one of the few things she's completely sure of.

She'd change lots of things about herself if she could, but that isn't one of them. Besides, the only people Gigi really talks to besides her mom are on the internet; _everyone_ is gay on the internet.

But it's also not like she falls in love with every girl she sees, and even if she did, she certainly isn't used to them giving her positive attention in any capacity. Crystal's unprecedented kindness is something Gigi has no idea how to process, or what to do with; there are plenty of pretty girls that make her heart stutter, but there's only one who left a smear of glitter spray on her arm that Gigi spent the entire rest of the day hyper-aware of.

Speak of the devil, Gigi's knees buckle with anxiety when she finally spots her. Her hair is trapped in a thick french braid, and her forehead and shoulders are sheened with sweat. Her chest heaves, and she's frowning, running her hand over the crown of her head. She shouts something to one of the girls, voice nearly swallowed up by the music, then points to another, a short girl with brown curls who rolls her eyes the moment Crystal’s attention has shifted elsewhere.

It doesn't take a genius to sense the exhaustion rolling off Crystal in waves. Of course, it's easy for Gigi to talk when she hasn't done so much as walk up a flight of stairs or half-jogged to the mailbox in about two years. She can't even imagine twisting her body into the positions these girls do, and she certainly can't imagine being in charge of so many bodies, keeping them in line. They move together as they start again from the top, undulating like the ebbing tides Gigi has seen from afar, a cohesive unit of rippling muscle and bent knees.

Gigi doesn't know much about cheerleading. Scratch that — she knows absolutely nothing, but even she can tell they're good. Better than most. Better than the team back home, at least, which served as a status symbol and not much else.

Crystal visibly relaxes as practice goes on, and the smile Gigi recognizes from the day she met her starts to creep back onto her face, something like pride burning alongside exhilaration in her eyes. There are girls practically flying over the mats like they've got springs in their shoes, girls who stand up tall and straight and unwavering as they're hoisted into the air. Gigi watches them all, awestruck, but their eyes always end up back on Crystal and so hers do, too. Everything seems to come back to her — the way she moves, how her head bobs when she talks, the hand that rests on the slope of her hip. The way the other girls look to her almost desperately for approval.

By the time the session is over, the girls are sweating profusely and clearly complaining while Crystal rolls her eyes and shoos them off, stretching her arms over her head. Gigi feels like she might've just run a marathon herself.

God, what the fuck is she doing?

She winds up at the bottom of the stairwell, scrubbing her clammy hands over her face, careful not to mess with the metal around her chin. Everything itches suddenly, and she fights the urge to tear it off. She crosses her arms, grips her own biceps and tries to squeeze some approximation of sense into herself. The face of her watch reads 4:32. Her mom is going to tear her a new one; Gigi's surprised she hasn't texted already to make sure she isn't dead.

It's not that Gigi's ashamed, exactly. It would just be nice if she were able to make friends like a normal person instead of spying on the one person to give her attention like a fucking weirdo. She puts her hands over her ears, rests her forehead against her knees and wills the sudden, unbearable buzzing in her brain to quiet before she tries to stand up.

"I _knew_ you were stalking me."

The noise in Gigi's head dies momentarily, then comes back twice as strong, an angry storm of hornets kicking up within the confines of her skull.

Crystal is standing above her. She's got a cherry red bomber jacket pulled over her workout gear, and she's traded her sneakers for a pair of scuffed-up purple Docs. Her hair is loose and hanging down her back now, still slightly damp with sweat. She's grinning. Gigi almost swallows her own tongue.

"Who said I was stalking you?"

Crystal tilts her head. "Well, you're here, aren't you? And so am I, _sooo_..."

Gigi wants nothing more than to crawl out of her own skin and ditch it here in the hall like a linty sweater destined for the bottom of the lost-and-found bin. "I just stayed late to talk to my Calc teacher." It's almost impressive that she still manages to sound like she's lying despite it technically being the truth. At least Crystal doesn't seem mad, or even weirded out, really. Just kind of amused. 

All at once, Gigi is the mouse again.

"Yeah, okay. And then you decided to bum around here for another thirty minutes because...?"

Gigi stiffens. "How do you know that?" she asks defensively. "Are you sure you're not stalking _me_?" She winces. _Oh, my god, Gigi. Shut up._

"And if I am?" Crystal counters easily, raising an eyebrow, and maybe Gigi is losing it but she swears the look on Crystal's face is a touch coy. "I'm just joking, by the way. Daya was there, too, and she's been whining in my messages about having to wait in the parking lot for the past half hour." She holds up her phone, then leans down to look Gigi dead in the eye. She's so close Gigi can smell her mint gum. "Were you _spying_ on us, Miss Goode?"

Gigi's blood runs cold. She doesn't know who the hell Daya is, but she _does_ know she's just been caught red-handed and she has absolutely no idea how to explain it away. There are probably plenty of things she could say, but having to stare up the length of Crystal's legs from this spot on the floor is making it near impossible to think of any words at all.

"I just started feeling kind of sick," she croaks. Technically, this part isn't a lie: Gigi really is starting to feel as if she could vomit. "I figured I'd just wait around for a little until I tried to walk home, you know, so I didn't have to subject any strangers to the sight of me puking in the middle of the sidewalk." Her words are punctuated by the anxious tapping of her heel against the linoleum, knee bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. "What are you even supposed to do when that happens, anyway? Call 311?" She wants to smack herself. _God, please let me stop speaking._

Crystal conveniently ignores the embarrassing parts of her excuse. "You're going to _walk_?" she questions, straightening back up. "In this weather?"

Gigi frowns. "What weather?"

"Um. It's been pouring for the past hour," Crystal says in a tone that implies she's starting to think Gigi really is brainless. "You sure you're okay? Do I need to go get the nurse? Call an ambulance?" Gigi knows she's only teasing, but she ducks her head in humiliation anyway. Every word of Crystal's slides off her lips with ease, and Gigi wants to hate her for it, the way she radiates quiet self-assurance while Gigi feels like she's on the verge of spontaneously combusting just from looking at her.

"I'm fine, thanks," she mutters. She keeps her eyes trained on the floor and the tips of her shoes. "It's just been a long day, I guess. I hadn't realized."

"Well, come on."

Gigi looks up, forehead creased with confusion. "What?"

Crystal is already making her way towards the exit. "Come on." She looks over her shoulder. "Daya can totally give you a ride home. I'd give you one myself, but my car's in the shop." She makes something akin to a sad trombone noise, then laughs.

"Oh, no, she doesn't have to do that," Gigi insists quickly. Her palms are sweating again. "Seriously, I've walked home in way wor-"

"Gigi Goode!" Crystal says with an air of authority, effectively cutting her off as she turns back around on her heel. She grips Gigi's shoulders in a way that makes Gigi feel impossibly tiny again, the warmth from her hands seeping through the fabric of her shirt. "I will not be able to sleep tonight knowing that I let you shuffle home in the rain like a drowned rat. And I _really_ value my beauty sleep."

Pursing her lips, Gigi tightens her grip on the strap of her bag. Her name in Crystal's voice is playing on an endless loop in her head. "Won't she mind?"

"Don't even worry about Daya." Crystal waves her hand dismissively. "She doesn't mind _anything_. Now c'mon, I'm gross and tired."

Gigi almost wants to say _I don't think you're capable of being gross_ , but she keeps her mouth shut. She half-expects Crystal to take her arm again, but she doesn't; Gigi tries very hard not to be disappointed.

"Cool glitter," Crystal says out of nowhere as they walk side by side.

Gigi tilts her head. "Huh?"

"The glitter. On your..." Crystal's hand flounders, then moves to tap her own forehead. "On your thing."

Instinctively, one of Gigi's hands flies up to touch the head strap as if she's learning it's there for the first time. It's not _that_ , though.

It's just that Crystal's never even mentioned the headgear before, which Gigi thinks is pretty cool and a little weird, because it's almost always the very first thing people comment on. Sometimes it's the _only_ thing they ever comment on. To have someone do otherwise is not something she ever considered. Even now, with Crystal mentioning it for the first time, she does it so nonchalantly that for a moment Gigi almost forgets that it's a humiliating eyesore that's destroying her nonexistent social life.

"Oh," she says dumbly. "I...thank you."

Crystal reaches up to tap at it lightly, frowning when a few specks of pink glitter come away on her finger. She stares at it for a long second, then dots it onto her own nose with a funny little smirk. There's something delightfully strange about the action that makes Gigi's heart turn over on itself.

Nervous as she is, the fresh air feels incredible the second they step outside, thick with the scent of wet earth. She inhales and exhales deeply, and the nausea starts to subside. Crystal was right: it's raining buckets. Water droplets ricochet noisily off the metal awning above their head, and they both look up at it with a brief, childlike sense of astonishment.

Gigi isn't sure what she's expecting, but it isn't for Crystal to lead her over to a beat up red Honda Civic that's rumbling quietly on the curbside. Its bumper is plastered with stickers and magnets — WHEN GOD CREATED MAN, SHE WAS ONLY KIDDING in huge block letters just above the license plate catches Gigi's eye in particular through the downpour. She snorts. Her gaze snags on a flash of color tucked just inside the rear window; what Gigi immediately recognizes as the pansexual flag makes her insides light up, and she bites the inside of her cheek.

The biggest surprise of all comes, though, when she realizes with a tiny jolt of disbelief that the girl sitting in the driver's seat is the girl with the colorful hair from Calc — her Myspace-era goddess. Gigi laughs in spite of herself while Crystal pokes her head in the passenger side window.

"Unlock the back door, hoe!" she shouts over the rain, holding her hair out of her face. "We're giving Miss Goode here a ride home."

Daya says something back to her that Gigi doesn't catch, but whatever it is makes Crystal roll her eyes. "I'll give you gas money, you bitch." Looking back up at Gigi, she gives her a thumbs up that coincides almost perfectly with the _click_ of the back door lock. "Now climb on in before you start rusting, Tin Lady." She winks. Gigi ducks.

It's almost uncomfortably toasty in the backseat of Daya's car. The air is cloying, as if the entire car has been doused in cherry blossom air freshener.

"So, Gigi!" Crystal exclaims from where she's settled in the passenger seat with her knees drawn up, "I'd like to _formally_ introduce you to my sister."

_Sister?_

"Oh," Gigi squeaks, eyes swinging between the two of them. Her skin prickles with embarrassment. "Sorry, I had no idea."

In the rearview mirror, she catches a glimpse of Daya rolling her eyes as the car peels away from the curb. "She's fucking with you," Daya says, and Crystal bursts into a fit of laughter. "If we were actually sisters I'd have ended it all a long time ago."

Crystal puts on a wounded face. "You're so mean to me all the time." Then she twists around in her seat to look at Gigi again. "Okay, we're _basically_ sisters."

"We literally aren't."

"Soul sisters!" Crystal insists, smacking Daya's shoulder and snickering when she moves to turn up the radio.

"Anyway, it's good to meet you. _Officially_ ," Daya shouts over the music, offering Gigi a sympathetic look in the rearview. "And sorry about this asshole." She gestures vaguely to Crystal, who rolls her eyes and exhales heavily.

"I am _not_ ," Crystal counters. "Right, Gigi?" She flutters her lashes.

"Huh? Oh, no. I mean — no, not at all," Gigi stammers, barely audible over the music. "Definitely not." She thinks maybe it would be funny to say _Well, you_ did _almost make me cry_ , but she's not going to risk it. She keeps the words trapped under her tongue.

Regardless, Crystal seems pleased. She smiles, catlike, and pokes at Daya's knee with her index finger. " _See?_ I'm practically Mother Teresa."

Gigi sits with her hands in her lap, knees pressed together and feeling awfully lost. She's third-wheeled before, sure, back in the days of coloring books and playground rules, but that was a long time ago. With Daya and Crystal play-fighting and laughing in the front seat, years of inside jokes and love between them, Gigi suddenly feels like she's sitting just outside something wonderful. Closer, maybe, than she's ever been.

If Crystal can be such good friends with someone like Daya, Gigi thinks that maybe — just maybe! — there might actually be a place for her here. The idea is almost paralyzing, and she has to force herself to curl her fingers against the fabric of her shorts just to keep herself grounded. She doesn't want to get her hopes up.

They listen to a lot of Y2K-inspired pop. Most if it is stuff that Gigi's never heard. She doesn't hate it — she just doesn't know _where_ she'd listen to it. She doesn't have her own car or friends to sing along with. She's never had a gym membership and does not ever intend to. She's too young to go to clubs and the last time she was invited to a party was in sixth grade (it was a birthday sleepover; Gigi'd gotten so anxious and homesick that the birthday girl's parents had to call her mom to come get her halfway through the night.)

Now, Crystal is probably good at a lot of things. Gigi's spoken to her exactly twice and even she can name them off the top of her head: she knows Crystal is good at cheer and she's good at, like, talking to people and she's great at making Gigi's palms sweat for no reason at all.

What Crystal is _not_ , though, is a singer. At all. She seems acutely aware of this fact, and doesn't appear even a little bit bothered by it as she switches between lipsyncing and shouting along to the music. She's expressive while she serenades Daya with lyrics that make the back of Gigi's neck heat up, and every so often she'll twist around and sing them to Gigi, laughing all the while. She’s still got glitter on her nose.

Gigi thinks she might die before she ever gets home.

"Don't mind her. Crystal is sexually repressed." Daya ducks, narrowly missing the hand Crystal reaches to swat her with.

"Am _not_ , you bitch!"

If it weren't for Daya's correction, Gigi would've fully believed they _were_ sisters; she has such a good time watching the two of them go at it that it feels like she's leaving pieces of her own loneliness behind at every red light. Her face starts to hurt from smiling.

When they pull up to Crystal's house — a sprawling Spanish-style villa with a front yard of green, green grass and roses crawling up one wall — Gigi is leaning so far forward her chest is nearly pressed against the tops of her thighs. She’s giddy with something near unrecognizable.

She wants to be a part of this. At the moment, she thinks she might want it more than she’s ever wanted anything. She almost considers asking Crystal if she can come inside; she wants to see the inner workings of the Methyd household, all the things that make Crystal herself, just so she can chase the high of semi-belonging a little while longer.

But that would be weird, and more than anything she wants to get through the rest of today without humiliating herself again.

Crystal skips up the walkway and turns around to blow Daya a theatrical, smacking kiss, then waggles her fingers at Gigi. Gigi stares after her like a lost puppy through the car window that's starting to fog with her breath; she can barely remember how to move her arm to wave back clumsily.

"Gigi?" Daya's voice comes through the haze, and Gigi's gaze snaps away from the window in record time.

"Oh, sorry. What did you say?"

Daya purses her lips, like she's trying not to smile. Gigi's cheeks burn. So much for avoiding humiliation.

"I asked if you wanted to come sit up front now."

* * *

It's just Gigi's luck that her mom wouldn't be home the one time she forgets her key. She swears she had it with her earlier; by the time she considers that it may be in the backseat of Daya's car, the girl is long gone.

Gigi lets her head roll back, blinking at the weeping sky, and sighs deeply.

The courtyard of their building is decorated sparsely with plastic chairs left over from the previous tenants, and some overgrown plants they've been put in charge of keeping alive (a daunting task.) It's a nice feature to have, but their neighbors are out there quite a bit, so Gigi tries to avoid it whenever she can, holed up in her room and letting herself wither away with the blinds drawn. She knows they have every right to use it — they pay to live here too, after all. But every time she even thinks about curling up on a bench with her sketchbook and her headphones, their laughter resounds from the other side of the back door, and Gigi chickens out.

Her mom had insisted on hiding a key under the back mat in the courtyard, even after Gigi tried in vain to convince her it was the worst idea ever. She suddenly couldn't be more grateful for her mother's complete lack of paranoia that they're going to be murdered in their beds.

Except when Gigi reaches under the soaked mat, her fingers touch nothing but pavement. She peels it away entirely, and — fucking _nothing_.

Of course Christine Goode decides to listen to her daughter at the most inconvenient time possible. Gigi groans, sinking to her knees and resting her forehead against the screen door. She's so tired and the rain has quickly gone from refreshing to bone-chilling and her thoughts are all twisted up in knots; she'd love to unsnarl them while neck-deep in a hot bath, but she can't do that until she can _get inside the fucking house_.

"Hey!"

Gigi startles so violently that she topples backwards onto the pavement. She lands roughly on her elbows, and she can already feel blood seeping warm and wet through the sleeves of her hoodie. Someone is standing above her, presumably with an umbrella, because Gigi's top half is suddenly and mercifully shielded from the downpour.

After struggling to her feet, she comes face to face with a wide-eyed young woman who is, indeed, clutching a polka-dot umbrella and eyeing her with concern. She's got blonde hair that looks like it belongs in a Pantene commercial, and Gigi guesses she's probably a couple years her senior; early twenties at the most.

"Geez, sorry about that! I didn't realize you were meditating."

Gigi blinks. "I wasn't." The umbrella probably wouldn't be big enough for the both of them to comfortably stand under together even if they were old friends, so the back of her head is still getting soaked, hair plastered to the back of her neck.

"Oh. Well, are you alright?"

Gigi thinks she's been asked that question more times in the past week than she ever has in her entire life, and she has absolutely no idea how to feel about it nor does she know how to respond.

Before she can even open her mouth to answer, the woman levels her with an accusatory look. "Wait. You're not trying to break in, are you?" It's only another moment before a wave of realization passes over her face, and Gigi, sensing she's about to be cut off again, doesn't even bother arguing.

"Oh my god! Gigi, right?" _There we go_. "Your mom told me all about you." She grabs Gigi's hands, grinning from ear to ear in a way that might be unnerving if she didn't seem so genuinely thrilled, as if her entire life has been leading up to this. _The one and only Gigi Goode! What an honor._ It's kind of sweet, in a terribly overbearing way that makes Gigi want to curl into herself like a pillbug. "It's so good to finally meet you! I feel so bad, I've been meaning to catch you for aaages now. I'm Jan. I live...well, right there." She jerks her thumb back towards the door on the other side the courtyard. Then, instead of Crystal's formal handshake on school grounds, Jan goes right in for a hug.

Now, Gigi is not particularly affectionate at the best of times, even with her own mom. With strangers, she almost always would rather be hit by a semi than be touched. But Jan's grip is tight and Gigi's had a rough day, so she sighs, limbs relaxing, and lets it happen.

"Now," Jan says when she pulls away, brows raised knowingly. "You'll be glad to know your mom left an extra key with us in case you ever forgot yours and she wasn't home." She reaches into the pocket of her oversized cardigan and fishes out a shiny, familiar key. "For you, ma'am."

Gigi could cry with relief; she's so happy she almost hugs Jan again. She thanks her three times and goes to unlock the back door, then tosses it back at Jan's insistence. It's an awful throw, and they both laugh when Jan has to crawl under one of the chairs to retrieve it.

"I'll see you around soon?" Jan says hopefully. "Don't be a stranger...the girls want to meet you, too!"

"Um, sure," Gigi answers from the comfort of her doorway. "Thanks again, Jan." Make that four times. 

"I know, I know. I'm a lifesaver! Don't mention it, kiddo." Gigi thinks that's sort of a funny thing for her to say. Jan can't be any older than twenty.

She closes the door and presses her back against it, feeling strangely warm all over. Gigi knows it's a dangerous thought to be having, that maybe there are places and people here for her, but it comes creeping up on her again like a ghost anyway.

* * *

Her nightly ritual of removing her headgear, staring at herself in the mirror until she no longer recognizes her own face, then sinking into an almost uncomfortably hot bath in the pretty claw-foot tub has been the only thing keeping Gigi grounded since they got to LA. By the time she drags herself out, feeling loose-limbed and sleepy, and slips into her pajamas, everything is starting to feel a little grey around the edges again, loneliness crawling back to settle like a napping cat around her neck.

Maybe it had been stupid, to think things would be different.

She shakes her head and busies herself with hanging up more of her sketches on the wall across from her bed — some unfinished and half-colored, some she'd nearly torn in two with frustration, some that she cringes looking at now. Still, she's proud of them all in a strange, nostalgic way. They get packed up in a folder with her wherever she goes — in a fire, a flood, a tornado, at the end of the world.

The storm outside has mostly died down, reduced to an on-and-off drizzle as the city sinks deeper into the night. Gigi can hear her mom clamoring around in the kitchen, cleaning up from dinner; she'd picked up Chinese take-out on the way home, apologized for swiping the spare key, and kissed Gigi on the head. Just like that, all was forgotten, and they'd laughed over their food, chatting about all the new people Christine Goode has met at work and all the celebrities she's rubbed shoulders with, Gigi's eyes bugging all the while.

Her mom seems happy, so Gigi's happy. She can hear her humming along to music over the running water of the kitchen sink. _But in your dreams, wherever they be...dream a little dream of me..._

Gigi smiles to herself.

The wall is still only two thirds of the way covered when she gives up, retiring to her bed for the night. She spends the next half hour with her glasses on and her nose pressed to the screen of her phone, happily destroying her already failing eyesight in the name of online discourse until her mom forces her to turn it in. She kisses Gigi's hair, squeezes her shoulder, says _thank you_ for maybe the hundredth time this week, and turns out the light.

Gigi is on the brink of sleep when the singing starts up. Of course. She rolls over, groaning, and covers her head with her pillow when she realizes why the voice suddenly sounds friendlier, more familiar — of _course_ it's fucking Jan. She grins into her sheets and has a good laugh by herself there in the dark, knees drawn to her chest, more amused than annoyed now even if she is exhausted.

Gigi decides, right then, that she likes Jan. She likes her very much. She likes Daya, too. Very, very much.

And, perhaps against her better judgement, she likes Crystal more than she knows what to do with.

She stares down her sketches in the dark until she drifts off to thoughts of a happier future, having tricked her brain into letting Jan's muffled singing mingled with the drizzle of rain lull her to sleep.

(And if Gigi dreams of red hair and pink glitter on Crystal's nose and the long, tan, expanse of her legs — well, she'll deal with that in the morning.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stream the trailer for zack snyders justice league coming to hbo max in 2021 
> 
> more importantly though, knowing on awful days that i have this to come home and work on has been one of the greatest joys in recent memory — my appreciation for anyone on this ride w me cannot be overstated. i love u endlessly
> 
> (also, if u saw this chapter get added and deleted like eight times in five minutes...shhh. its 1 am, i am v sleepy, and my brain is tiny)

**Author's Note:**

> absolutely obsessed with pessimistic anxiety ridden loser gigi goode
> 
> i also think tagging every character is super grating but just know that practically everyone will show up in some capacity, even if it’s just in passing, bc i think that’s cute and Fun


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